Book reviews (part 8)

Most of the books I've read over the last few months have been by my favourite authors, but I've also sampled a few authors who are new to my reading list. Here's another selection of book reviews from some of the books and short stories I've recently been reading.

I, Partridge by Alan Partridge

I, Partridge - We Need To Talk About Alan by Alan Partridge - 5.0 / 5.0

One of the first reviews I read of 'I, Partridge' called it, "The funniest book of the year, and possibly all time," and I would have to agree. Even if you had never heard of Alan Partridge before or never seen any of his shows, this would still be a hilarious book with several laugh out loud moments on every page.

If you're already an Alan Partridge fan, then some of the chapters where he describes events already seen on his TV shows are especially amusing, particularly when Alan recalls certain events through his rose-tinted memories and portrays himself in a favourable, often heroic, light when the reality was somewhat different.

A contender for the most unexpected question ever...

A volcano erupting, pictured yesterday.

A few months ago on this blog I featured a contender for one of the most stupid questions of all time, and I recently encountered another totally random and bizarre, and completely unexpected question.

I'd been away travelling for a few months so on my return to the UK I registered at the local employment office and was asked to complete a survey regarding my search for a job.

The first few questions were typical normal questions that you would expect to be asked, such as:

1) "What is your name?"
"Charles Fudgemuffin" *

* Of course as this was an official and serious government questionnaire, I didn't put Charles Fudgemuffin on the form. I instead used my real name, which for the benefit of anyone who's interested is Henry Flangechomper.

2) "What qualifications do you have?"
"I am the writer of the critically acclaimed 'Remember to put the bins out' note."

3) "Have you applied for any jobs since returning to the UK?"
"Yes, I have applied for the posts of Graffiti Artist Humiliation Officer and Reputation Attenuator."

As you can see it was all fairly straight forward so far, but then suddenly from nowhere came the most randomly unexpected question ever...

Funny football quotes (part 5)

Football, the inspiration for numerous silly quotes.

A new season of the Premiership starts this weekend, and at the start of each new football season I traditionally feature a round-up of funny football quotes, so here's another batch of amusing quotes from footballers, managers and commentators that made me chuckle...

1) "Strangely, in slow motion replay, the ball seemed to hang in the air for even longer."
...Commentator David Acfield

Yes, slow motion tends to do that, David.


2) "I'm going to make a prediction... It could go either way."
...Ron Atkinson sticks his neck out.

3) "Don't tell those coming in the final result of that fantastic match, but let's just have another look at Italy's winning goal."

...David Coleman cleverly avoids spoiling the match for viewers who haven't yet seen the result.

10 cool Swedish words and expressions (part 3)

A Swedish flag I saw hanging in a bar in Magaluf.

Two posts on the Charles Fudgemuffin blog which get a lot of hits are my '10 cool Swedish words and expressions' and its follow-up post '10 more cool Swedish words and expressions'. They say you should listen to your audience, so with that in mind here are ten more of my favourite Swedish words and expressions, featuring green carrots, dancing trains, and breast warts...

1) Breast warts

If someone refers to their bröstvårta, or breast warts, don't worry, they haven't been struck down with some Biblical contagious disease. In Swedish, breast warts are nipples. Perhaps not quite as appealing when they're described as breast warts, although admittedly still quite appealing.

2) Beards and cookies

An interesting Swedish expression is the phrase, 'Skägget i brevlådan,' which means to be caught with your beard in the letterbox, and is the equivalent of the American saying, to be 'caught with your hands in the cookie jar'. If you took the two sayings at face value then you might perhaps conclude that Americans are more likely to be greedy whereas Swedish people are more likely to be snoops. However, my experience of American and Swedish people wouldn't back that up at all, and I haven't met a great number of Swedish people with beards either, so I'm not quite sure where the inspiration behind this saying came from.

Silly job titles

Do you call a spade a spade, or a 'soil relocation device'?

A 'soil relocation device', more commonly known as a spade.

As I was leaving the house the other morning a van drove by with the words 'Fluid Transferral Systems' emblazoned across its side. At first I was baffled as to what this actually meant, until at the bottom of the display in small letters I noticed the simple explanation...

'Hoses'

In this day and age there seems to be an ever increasing popularity to invent stupid complicated ways of describing things, especially when it comes to job titles.

So on that theme I thought I would compose a quiz based on some of the long-winded job titles that companies and organisations have used to describe jobs which are traditionally known by a more simple description.

All of the following are real job titles that some daft PR people have come up with. With some of them, by deciphering the jargon you can probably work out what the actual real normal job title is, but in some cases, especially with the last example, even when you see the answer you'll think, "Eh? Which fool came up with that daft job name?"

See how many you can work out, and to start you off, the first job is based on the already mentioned van slogan. You'll find the answers at the bottom of the quiz...